Cambrian Fintech with Rex Salisbury
00:21:06 · Jack Zhang
[00:21:06] S1: Yeah. So from a customer point of view, we we in about 20 markets. Right? So there's about market in APAC, then, you know, another sort of 10 ish market in Americas and in Europe. Most of the market are developed country, you know, like Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Shanghai, Japan, Korea, UK, France, Germany, Benelux, and, you know, Spain, you know, etcetera, Europe, and then Israel. And you also got, like, Canada and and US and Mexico and and and then Brazil and and The Americas. So out of all these 20 markets we are in and already regulated and launched our product... Have product market fit, that's about a 120,000,000 businesses that are kind of operating globally, whether they have customers or revenue or suppliers or vendors or they have multiple entities across region, kind of operating globally in some way. And, you know, like, right now, we're making about $6,000 per customer, you know, if we get to a million customers that we should be able to achieve 6,000,000,000 in top line. And then a million customer is less than 1% of the market we're talking about in the markets we already have product market, but not even counting the new product we belong to. So basically, even getting one... Less than 1% of the market we are in should be able to support AirWallet to build a $100,000,000,000 bookings.
00:22:34 · Rex Salisbury
[00:22:34] S0: Yep. Yeah. There are a lot of global SMBs. And as you build this combinatorial explosion of different products, you can unlock new and different revenue streams. You also have a great story about how you met your first investor and co founder. How did that result in you getting a million dollars in your personal bank account even before the company was formed?
00:22:55 · Jack Zhang
[00:22:55] S1: That's actually an interesting story. So Lucy is a friend of Max, which is another cofounder of AirWallax. He's the head of product design, and he also the guy that helped me to open the coffee business. And one day, I just sort of finished work on Friday evening, and I went to see Max in a coffee shop, and I see... Met Lucy, who's a friend of Max, and we just sort of talk about, a bunch of stuff. And Lucy was interested in investing in a coffee business. We we sort of just keep talking, and and and and we went to dinner afterwards. And, and I told her that we... I'm gonna resign and started building air wallets and and how that gonna evolutionize the kind of post border payments or, you know, global money movement industries. And she's sort of really interested in the idea and and asked whether I'm raising money, and I said I'm probably gonna raise a million dollars. And on the spot, this is, like, a few hours after we we met the first time, and she offered to give me $2,000,000 for 40% of the company, and I kind of shocked. But, you know, but she was, you know, pretty adamant and quite serious about it. And and the next day, we went... We all went to the same college and went to law school and the library, and we talked about it, you know, by... You know, when did we kinda start talking about 09:00, and and we we kinda got the... A deal agreed that she would invest a million dollar for 20% of company by the midday. And and the money just wired to my bank account on Mondays, so three days after after I met her the the first time. And and, obviously
00:24:32 · Rex Salisbury, Jack Zhang
[00:24:32] S0: I think it's a personal bank account because you don't... You haven't even formed the company at [00:24:35] S1: this point. I I haven't even go... I haven't even resigned at that point. I was still a full time working in investment bank. I still, you know, hadn't registered the company. So that, obviously, give me a lot of motivation. So, basically, I think I got all the money close to midday, and I I resigned in afternoon. And and and that's that give us the initial capital to build the the the kind of initial product of Airwallets. And and, obviously, I really kind of appreciating the trust and the the bad that she put on us, and and I bought it for to be the cofounder of the company to do... To build this company together, and she become the CEO role and kinda leading the the finance and the... At the the back office for an additional few years. And now she's leading our PR commerce team globally. [00:25:27] S0: Any founders watching this, I invest very early, usually first check-in, but I will not wire money to your personal bank account. You do have to have a business, incorporated, and a business account. So that was probably your easiest raise. Talk to me about maybe your hardest raise.
00:25:47 · Jack Zhang
[00:25:47] S1: I think there's many rounds of pretty hard, and and obviously, series a was pretty hard because we kind of build a product, and then we'll fail the first time. We'll build the next product, which we know gonna fail again. But we do have product market fit for a few 100 SMBs in Australia. We're able to leverage in the product to raise our series a, and, and Tencent was was was one of the investor. And the the founder sort of asked them, why can't we build a product ourselves? Why a small startup in Australia can do better than what we do? We have, you know, hundreds of thousand employees and have a big fintech division. And and the the investment team is sort of not really sure what to say. And the deal just kinda got stalled for a couple of months until I had the opportunity to meet with the the president in Hong Kong and able to kind of convince him to continue to... You know, he would convince him to convince the founder of Tencent to approve the deal. And then, you know, at that time, we were only have a few weeks to money left with the bank and kinda almost, you know, bankrupted. And, you know, we also raised around Series D in the middle of COVID. And I I remember that the time we we we were about to close the round, and The US stock market crashed three times, like a 30% essentially. So the 10% down on Monday, 10% down on Thursday and then Friday, we were closed on Friday evening. I wasn't sure if we we able to close around because our revenue also down 30, 40% in in just a matter of couple months because we have bunches customer intuition and travel all kind of went to zero. But lucky the investor, you know, closed the route. So, you know, that's many of these stories happen throughout the last decades.
00:27:38 · Rex Salisbury
[00:27:38] S0: Yeah. And I think those are important stories for founders to hear because I deal with a lot of founders who are... You know, they're trying to raise an a. It's really hard. They're working with a strategic who's, on one hand a great partner. On the other hand, they have these conflicts that they have to navigate around the investment team versus the business wanting to do things. So thanks for sharing some of those things. There are a lot of folks listening probably going through similar experiences to what you've been through. I think one other thing I wanted to talk about, too, is just how your go to market has worked. So we've talked about the product, how it's had these kind of three distinct phases. But how do you think about kind of marketing yourself to customers? And in particular, I think it's interesting you guys have built out a partnership with the McLaren F1 team, which before they actually started leading the constructors championship this year. So maybe talk about just how you think about go to market broadly.